A tough moment. Jennie Garth grew emotional when speaking about a difficult instance she experienced recently that involving the late Luke Perry, who was her pal and former costar.
“Just yesterday, I saw a phone number pop on my phone. I thought it said L.P. and it didn’t,” the BH90210 actress, 47, told Access Hollywood on Wednesday, February 26. “It said J.P. It was someone else. But for that second, it was hard.”
Garth admitted that it’s tough for her to wrap her head around Perry’s passing, adding, “The reality of it, I kind of refuse to let it sink in. Like, I don’t know. It doesn’t seem real.”
Perry died on March 4, 2019, at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California. The news cames days after the Riverdale actor suffered a massive stroke at his home in Sherman Oaks, California. He was 52.
The Ohio native was married from 1993 to 2003 to actress Rachel Sharp, with whom he shares son Jack, 22, and daughter Sophie, 19.
In Garth’s interview with Access Hollywood, the What I Like About You alum revealed that Perry’s son often reminds her of the late actor. “I sometimes find myself just staring at him when we’re together,” she admitted. “He reminds me so much of Luke when we met and he was young.”
Garth and Perry starred on Beverly Hills, 90210 together as Kelly and Dylan, respectively. Shannen Doherty, Tori Spelling, Jason Priestley, Brian Austin Green, Ian Ziering and Gabrielle Carteris were also a part of the cast.
Unlike his former castmates, Perry was not expected to appear in Fox’s BH90210 revival series. However, the Mystery Girl alum told Us Weekly exclusively that the late star was supportive of his costars joining the show, which was canceled in November 2019.
“I know that he knew about it before he passed away, and he was all very supportive of it and encouraging us to stick to our vision and not be swayed, which was what we just … It was like our mantra to keep going forward,” Garth explained to Us in December 2019. “More than anything, I know he was happy that we were together.”
Months earlier, she revealed how beneficial it was for the cast to be together in the wake of Perry’s passing. “The timing was something that seemed horrific, but in a weird, sort of universal way, it was a way for us to all be together during an incomprehensible painful time,” she explained during a Today show appearance in August 2019. “I think that that was really good for all of us actually.”
